The Failure to Adapt and Innovate after a
Drawdown: The U.S. Army in the Interwar
Years 1919-1939
By Dave Shunk
Journal Article | Jun 14 2013 - 2:30am
The most apt historical parallel to the current period in the development of robotics may well turn out to
be World War I. Back then, strange, exciting new technologies that had been science fiction just years
earlier were introduced and used in increasing numbers on the battlefield.
Indeed, it was H.G. Wells’ 1903 short story “Land Ironclads” that inspired Winston Churchill to
champion the development of the tank.[1]
When most leaders think about the locales of war, their eyes are drawn to the burning places on the
map…But those who step back from the map will notice something even more: there are even greater
shifts occurring that will shape the where of war in new ways in the coming century.[2]
P.W. Singer
Since the Revolutionary War the Army has drawn down after each conflict’s end. Also after every conflict
the Army is on a quest to see what future technology impacts will be the next ‘big things’ in warfare. One
similar historical period and technological parallels facing the Army today are the interwar years between
WWI and WWII. This article is envisioned to be followed with additional articles on the key technologies
(nanotechnology, genetics & robotics) facing the Army today which may dramatically change land
warfare in the future. So what were the Army drawdown experience and technology challenges after
WWI?
Army Drawdown after WWI
During WWI the Army grew to 3,757,624 men.[3] With victory came the inevitable draw down. With the
conclusion of WWI, “the War Department, in 1919, argued for a force of 500,000. Instead, Congress
steadily reduced the Army from 175,000 to 125,000, and by 1924 to 111,000 --only 11,000 more than the
Treaty of Versailles allowed a conquered and disarmed Germany.”[4] So shortly after WWI the Army
faced a future short on money and manpower, but the challenges of new technologies would dramatically
change future land warfare.
WWI Innovations as Land Warfare Game Changers in World War II
The problem after WWI: the next war is coming and technology is shaping in new ways how it will be
fought. Newly developed technologies that saw their introduction in WWI would revolutionize land
warfare within the next twenty years.
WWI saw many fledgling innovations: tank offensives, airpower (fighter and bomber), and submarine
warfare. It even had the first aircraft carrier[5] and the first naval air strike on enemy ships launched from
a ship.[6] Each of these technologies would dramatically change how war was fought in WWII.
However, the pressing needs of the Army after WWI clouded the future vision for innovation. The Army
became consumed with day to day survival and mission justification. The physical products of innovation
such as tanks were slow in coming as a result.
Interwar Funding
Interwar funding can be categorized into these statements and facts.
Appropriations for the military expenses of the War Department stabilized after the early 1920s at
roughly $300 million per year. This was about half the estimated cost of fully implementing the force
structure authorized in the National Defense Act.
During the interwar era the Army focused its limited resources on maintaining personnel strength
rather than on procuring new equipment. Army arsenals and laboratories were consequently
handicapped by small budgets.
For a number of years only about a quarter of the officers and half of the enlisted men of the Regular
Army were available for assignment to tactical units in the continental United States. Many units
existed only on paper; almost all had only skeleton strength. The Regular Army’s nine infantry
divisions possessed the combined strength of only three full divisions.
Cuts in appropriations and pay in the early 1930s as a result of the Great Depression made travel and
training all the more difficult, further reducing the readiness of Army units.[7]
A case can be made for not having the most innovative weapon systems due to budget impacts, but the
Army did not foresee the changes in technology, concepts and change their war fighting doctrine. Future
war may not offer the time to correct deficient weapon system technologies and doctrine.
Army Innovation Problems, 1919-1939, Limited Intellectual Success – Minimal Land Warfare
Concepts & Capabilities
The Army (and Army Air Corps) also placed considerable emphasis on professional military education,
but there was a less coherent focus on transformation, innovation, and the development of new
capabilities. One exception was the infantry school at Fort Benning, Georgia, during the five years that
George Marshall served as assistant commander.
Although small groups of officers in the armed services did much to transform the services, too much of
the peacetime military was devoted to maintaining the status quo. The difficulties of transformation and
innovation in the 1920s and 1930s suggest the difficulties of the paths ahead. There are no silver bullets,
no simple solutions.[8]
Against whom will they fight? Under what political and strategic conditions? Where will that struggle
take place? What technological, doctrinal, and tactical changes will have the greatest impact on the
battlefield?[9]
Williamson Murray
For the Navy and the Marine Corps the next apparent opponent seemed to be Imperial Japan. From the
early 1920s on, they began thinking, wargaming, and develop plans on the tactical, operational, strategic,
and logistic problems that might arise in a conflict in the Pacific. For the Army the vision and innovation
of armored divisions in combat in Europe came much later.
Not deterred by the limited budgets, one leader had the intellectual vision for future mechanized warfare.
LTC George C. Marshall, as the assistant commandant of the Infantry school 1927-1933, instilled the
leadership and intellectual vision required for the next war.
The real intellectual engine of the Army’s efforts at transformation came at the Infantry School at Fort
Benning, Georgia, during the five years that George Marshall served as assistant commandant. One
hundred and fifty future generals in World War II attended the school during this period, while an
astonishing fifty future generals worked for Marshall on the faculty.[10]
“Marshall advocated a major shift of hours to tactics, including an increasing emphasis on
mechanized warfare.”
In every exercise he routinely threw unexpected scenarios - His approach was to teach the students “
how to respond to adversity and learn from their mistakes.”
“One of Marshall’s most fundamental changes to the program was to reduce the emphasis on what
was called the school solution.”
He encouraged the officers to generate original and even unorthodox ideas. To reinforce this, he
made it a policy that “any student’s solution of a problem that ran radically counter to the
approved school solution, and yet showed independent creative thinking, would be published to
the class.”
Equally important, officers in the course found that they were free to “disagree at times on
questions of military education, regardless of rank,” in an atmosphere “of tolerance of ideas
which encourages open and free discussion.”[11]
In spite of all his efforts the Army did not embrace the tank, tactical air power and mechanized infantry
combined arms breakthrough theory. Additionally, the Army did not adopt lessons learned from actual
German Condor Legion combat experiences during the Spanish Civil War.
Condor Legion and the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 – Pre WWII Lessons Ignored
Colonel Stephen O. Fuqua, the [Army military] attaché, wrote in the spring of 1937 that "It is generally
accepted that the civil war in Spain had not only been a laboratory for testing equipment -particularly of
German and Russian designs, but a 'dress rehearsal' for the next war."[12]
The attaches and their sources insisted that tanks had to be employed in mass and in combination with
infantry, aviation and artillery support to be effective. Spain also demonstrated that the advantages of
heavy armor and armament outweighed the corresponding loss of speed.[13]
U.S. Army Attaches and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939
The German Condor Legion consisted of Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht volunteers who fought alongside the
Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War, July 1936 to March 1939. The Germans used this war effort as
a testing ground for their land warfare concepts and doctrine.
From the outbreak of the war in July 1936 through to the defeat of the Spanish Government in 1939, the
United States Army attachés in Europe gathered tactical and technical information about the combatants,
weapons and equipment used in Spain. The body of information that the attaches collected provided the
United States Army with clear indications of the development of German, Soviet and Italian weapons, and
pointed toward the possible tactical employment of those weapons in future wars.[14]
German Concepts & Doctrine Tested and Refined with the Condor Legion:
First use of German 88mm in anti-armor and direct fire role
First combat employing combined arms operations - German panzer, infantry, artillery and Stuka
First airlift of troops – Germany to Spain
First use of close air support for ground attack coordinated via radio
First air ambulance service for evacuation of German wounded combatants
The three years of war in Spain did not spur new interest in the changing nature of land warfare. Army
doctrine remained status quo – the next war like the previous would be dominated by infantry attacks.
Army Came Late to the Reality of Panzer Innovation and Land Warfare Impact
The Army did not quickly embrace the land warfare revolution with the tank, tactical air power and
mechanized infantry that the German Wehrmacht had developed with their panzers in the 1930s.
The “first genuine corps and Army maneuvers in the history of the United States”[15] occurred in May
1940. In contrast, as early as 1935 the Germans were conducting corps-size exercises for the purpose of
developing armor doctrine.[16] The Germans, with fewer opportunities for experimentation, secretly
trained with the Russians in the 1920s and organized armored divisions on a permanent basis by 1935.
On 10 May 1940, four German Panzer Corps attacked and defeated France and the lowland countries in
six weeks. The German Panzer Corps first demonstrated their effectiveness in Poland in September 1939,
the start of WWII. The creation of the U.S. Army’s armored force happened on 10 July 1940.[17]
Primary lesson from this interwar historical period: be on watch for the next big things. However, the next
war may not provide the time to recover from not learning, leading, and innovating.
Army Late on Airborne Warfare Concept
In 1936, German Major F. W. Immans opened the German airborne school on 3 May 1936.
German Airborne (Fallschirmjäger) forces made the first combat drop in WWII. On 9 April 1940 during
the invasion of Denmark, 96 Fallschirmjägers jumped from nine Junkers Ju-52 transports and captured the
Storstrøm Bridge and the coastal fortress on Masnedø Island.[18]
The first US airborne unit began as a test platoon formed from the 29th Infantry Regiment, in July 1940.
Again, like the panzers, the Army realized their value only after they were used in combat successfully.
Doctrine Failed to Keep Pace with Technology and Combined Arms Warfare
In 1923, five years after the [world] war, a comprehensive Field Service Regulations (FSR) was published
which addressed the complexities of modern warfare. Regrettably this was the last doctrinal manual to be
published for 16 years. Because of the changes in military technology that occurred in the 1920s and
1930s, the Office of the Chief of Staff published a tentative manual in 1939 [FSR 1939], titled FM 100-5,
Operations.[19]
FSR 1939 reflected the army’s incomplete understanding of the new operational and tactical
mobility…Advances in mobility and communication technology enabled commanders to pursue farther,
faster and with greater control than ever before. The manual failed to grasp fully the effect of
motorization and mechanization on tactics and operations despite frequent mention of modern
organizations and technologies.[20]
Similar to concepts and capabilities, Army doctrine did not have the correct vision for future warfare. The
Army did not recognize the technological impacts of the interwar years.
Rapid changes in the methods of war during the interwar years changed military doctrine from one "built
on infantry-artillery coordination to one based on a highly mobile combined arms team." Army doctrine
failed to address these innovations.[21]
The Army Field Service Regulations (FSR) for 1923 incorporated the lessons the Army learned in WWI
and accurately measured the state of military technology after the war. The 1923 FSR remained Army
Doctrine, without change, for the next sixteen years. The revised FSR issued in 1939, made very few
concessions to the military technological innovations occurring between 1923 and 1939.
Conclusion
"Would you tell me which way I ought to go from here?" asked Alice.
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get," said the Cat.
"I really don't care where" replied Alice.
"Then it doesn't much matter which way you go," said the Cat.
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
In the twenty years after WWI the U.S. Army did not have the vision to see the effect of emerging
technologies on land warfare. The failure to grasp the new concepts and update doctrine resulted in a late
and frantic rush to embrace the new technologies after WWII began. Today, like after WWI, many new
technologies have emerged from the last decade of combat operations and a drawdown is fact.
Technologies such as nanotechnology, genetics (soldier enhancements) and robotics have the potential to
again dramatically change land warfare. However, in the near future the Army many not have the time,
industrial base and intellectual speed to frantically catch up again.
NOTES
[1] P.W. Singer, Wired for War author, Abu Muqawama interview, 16 May 2009
http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama/2009/05/special-abu-muqawama-interview-pwsinger.html (last accessed 29 April 2013).
[2] P.W. Singer, Battlefields of the Future, Brookings Institute, 4 Feb 2011
http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2011/02/04-future-war-singer (last accessed 29 April
2013).
[3] Secretary of War, Annual Report, 1919, 4.
http://books.google.com/books?id=Tbw0AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=World+War+One,+u.s.+Army+orde
Gzohr6HYeBrXwRuo9C3enY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qZlUUeSfOcXF4AOI64DYAw&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&
(last accessed 29 April 2013).
[4] Donald Smythe, Pershing, General of the Armies (Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986),
27.
[5] In September 1914, the Imperial Japanese Navy sea plane carrier Wakamiya conducted the world's first
naval-launched air strike. On 6 Sep 1914 a Farman aircraft launched by Wakamiya attacked the AustroHungarian cruiser Kaiserin Elisabeth and the German gunboat Jaguar in Qiaozhou Bay off Tsingtao;
neither was hit. Source: Donko, Wilhelm M.: „Österreichs Kriegsmarine in Fernost: Alle Fahrten von
Schiffen der k.(u.)k. Kriegsmarine nach Ostasien, Australien und Ozeanien von 1820 bis 1914“, (Berlin,
2013), 4, 156-162, 427.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Tsingtao (last accessed 29 April 2013).
[6] In 1918, HMS Argus became the world's first carrier capable of launching and landing naval aircraft.
Geoffrey Till, "Adopting the Aircraft Carrier: The British, Japanese, and American Case Studies" in
Murray, Williamson; Millet, Allan R, eds. (1996). Military Innovation in the Interwar Period. (New York:
Cambridge University Press), 194.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_carrier (last accessed 29 April 2013).
[7]Richard Stewart, Editor, American Military History Volume II, The United States Army in a Global
Ear, 1917-2003, , (Washington, D.C., Center of Military History, 2005), page 59.
http://www.history.army.mil/books/AMH-V2/AMH%20V2/chapter2.htm (last accessed 29 April
2013).
[8] Williamson Murray, Transformation and Innovation: the Lessons of the 1920s and 1930s, Dec 2002,
ES-1.
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA423507 (last accessed 29 April 2013).
[9] Murray, 2.
[10]Murray, 11.
[11]Jon T. Hoffman, editor, A History of Innovation, U.S. Army Adaptation in War and Peace,
(Washington, D.C., Center of Military History, U.S. Army, 1 Oct 2009) 27-35.
http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/innovation/History_of_Innovation.pdf (last accessed 29
April 2013).
[12]Captain Kim Juntunen, U.S. Army Attaches and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939: The Gathering of
Technical and Tactical Intelligence, Thesis, 4 May 1990, 3.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a222347.pdf (last accessed 29 April 2013).
[13]Juntunen, 132.
[14] Juntunen, 4.
[15] Roman Jarymowycz, Tank Tactics from Normandy to Lorraine, (Boulder Colorado: Lynne Rienner
Publishers Inc., 2001), 70.
[16]LTC Kenneth A. Steadman, The Evolution of the Tank in the U.S. Army, Combat Studies Institute
(CSI) Paper #1, 21 April 1982, 17.
http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/CGSC/CARL/download/csipubs/EvolutionOfTankInArmy_Steadman.pdf
(last accessed 29 April 2013).
1. Jarymowycz, 71.
[18]German invasion of Denmark (1940)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_invasion_of_Denmark_(1940) (last accessed 29 April 2013).
[19] TRADOC History Office, Full title of FSR 1939: Office of the Chief of Staff, FM 100-5, Tentative
Field Service Regulations 1939, Operations, Washington, United States Government Printing Office,
1939.
http://www.tradoc.army.mil/historian/faqs.htm (last accessed 29 April 2013).
[20]William O. Odom, After the Trenches – The Transformation of the U.S. Army Doctrine, 1918-1939, (
Texas A&M: Texas A&M University Military History Series 64, 1999), 135.
[21] Odom, 237.
About the Author
Dave Shunk
Dave Shunk is a retired USAF colonel, B-52G pilot, and Desert Storm combat
veteran whose last military assignment was as the B-2 Vice Wing Commander of
the 509th Bomb Wing, Whitman AFB, MO. Currently, he is a researcher/writer and
DA civilian working in Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC), Future
Warfare Division, Fort Eustis, Virginia. He has a National Security Strategy MS
from the National War College.
Available online at : http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/the-failure-to-adapt-and-innovate-aftera-drawdown-the-us-army-in-the-interwar-years-1919-1
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